Before you click OK, however, clear the box beside the word Transparent and click once in the colored square just above that word. This opens the Material Properties palette.

In the HTML color field type in the code #EEE9DC,click OK once to close the dialog, and click OK one more time to tell Paint Shop Pro to create the new image. This will give you a pale beige canvas. (You’ll be able to change the color to anything you like later.)

We will next create a texture for our image. Go to Effects / Texture Effects / Texture a new window will appear. Using our Cloudpattern and the settings as below create the texture on your paper.

This gives us the texture background without the visible signs of a repeated pattern.

One of the features that makes handmade paper so interesting is the slight presence of small fibers. We will recreate that here.

Add a new raster layer and going to the paint brush tool set the options at small round, size 4, Hardness 50, Step 5, and the rest at 100 with normal blend mode as below.

Start by opening the brush variance palette. Go to View / Palettes / Brush Variance in the box next to the settings for "Size" Click on the drop down menu and choose the fade out option then change the settings for the Fade rate to 285 as in the picture below.

When we are done we can reset the variances back to the default by clicking on the curved arrow in the bottom right hand of this palette.

Going to our materials palette choose a color several shades darker than our background (I used html #8A835F) Making sure that our new raster layer is selected scribble some lines all over the paper, don't worry, you can't mess this up!

Next go to Effects / 3D Effects / Inner Bevel and at the top of the page reset the settings to default by clicking on the curved arrow. Then click OK.

This will give a slight bevel to the lines we just drew, don't be afraid that they are too prominent we will fix that. Add a new raster layer and go to your foreground color in the materials palette and choose a color slightly lighter than our background color, I used HTML #F4F1EA. Using the Paintbrush with the same variances and settings as before draw some lines across the canvas on our new layer. And again go to Effects / 3D Effects / Inner Bevel using the default settings again, click ok. It should now look similar to this.

Making sure that Raster Layer 2 is the active layer go to Layers / Merge / Merge Down. This will combine both the light and dark lines into one.

With our combined layer active, go to Layers / New Mask Layer / Show All. This will create a new layer group and a new mask layer above the current one. Click on the mask layer to make it active and go to Flood Fill Tool.

In the Materials Palette click on our foreground color, you will notice that our color choices are in shades of black to white, that is because Mask Layers are only in Grayscale. Click on the Pattern tab, remember we left the cloud texture image open it should now appear in the choices on the pattern list. Choose this pattern with the following settings.

Angle at 45 and Scale at 122. Close the window. With the Mask Layer selected, see below, Flood fill this pattern into the new layer.

This softens the look of the fibers. You can add other elements, natural elements work best such as leaves, flower petals, feathers, etc. but for now we will leave it this way. We want to merge our layers right now, so go to Layers / Merge / Merge All. Once you are satisfied with the paper, the following step is especially true if you are adding more elements to your paper.

Open a new raster layer and choosing the same color as our background go to the Materials Palette and click on the texture box then in the drop down menu choose the Cloud pattern again, changing the scale to about 45%. Then flood fill the image again with this texture. This brings all the elements and fibers together to make our image seem more like the handmade paper we want. We could stop here but go to Effects / Texture Effects / Texture again and your settings should be the same as before, click Ok and this brings the texture back into the image.

Now we will add the Deckled Edges to make it look just like handmade paper. We need to merge all layers again and this time we will also need to promote the background layer to a raster layer, Go to Layers / Promote Background Layer You should now only have one raster layer.

For instructional purposes I have added a green layer beneath just make it clearer what I am doing, you do not need to do this, this is just to show how the image looks.

Next click on the Eraser Tool (the eraser tool can be used in much the same way as the brush tool) on the Tool Options Menu click on the drop down menu to choose the brush tip, locate the Deckled Brush Tip and change the settings as follows: Size - 75, Step - 32, and Opacity - 75. Then open your Brush Variance Palette again, locate the rotation option and set it Oscillating Fade leaving the fade rate at 100. This gives us a random pattern down the side of the page as you will see.

Starting at the top left edge of our paper image click at the point where you want the deckled edge to start, then hold the shift key down and click where you want the edge to stop.

You can now do the same on the right side of the image and even on the top and bottom of the image.

You now have beautiful, handmade paper look for your scrapbooking or cards!

Here is an example for using these papers.

Have fun!